Three young leaders changing the world one step at a time

Charlot Magayi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mukuru Clean Stoves: I never saw it as something that's big. I didn't think, oh, let's address climate change with the cook stove, for instance. In the beginning, it was a small problem that I wanted to solve for just a small community of people.

Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum that looks at the biggest challenges and how we might solve them.

This week we talk to young leaders who are tackling big issues - from an entrepreneur in Africa making cooking safer and healthier, to an Olympic champion campaigning for greater investment in sport, especially in smaller, less wealthy countries.

Kirani James, Olympic athlete: So the gap between smaller underrepresented countries and bigger fully funded countries, it's a phenomenal gap, I would say.

We are not starting at the same level. When that happens, we have to try a lot harder.

It is something that we really have to work on because the talent is there, not just in sports, but in a lot of other areas, whether it's art, whether it is education, whether it's just innovation.

Robin Pomeroy: We hear of the challenges and triumphs of three Young Global Leaders.

Trisha Shetty, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, SheSays: It became a citizen led movement and we successfully got the Indian government to declare sanitary napkins as tax free. That's a huge bill that affects half the population and actually it affects the entire country's GDP.

Robin Pomeroy: Follow Radio Davos wherever you get podcasts, or visit wef.ch/podcasts. I’m Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with three Young Global Leaders…

Kirani James: The talent is there, the mind is there. But if we don't have the support or we're not starting from the same level then it's always going to be difficult to truly break through and to have that exposure in the bigger world.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos.

Welcome to Radio Davos. On this episode we're talking about leadership and we'll be hearing from three very interesting, very different young leaders. And on this episode I'm joined by a co-host, my colleague at the World Economic Forum, Ida Jeng Christensen. Hi Ida, how are you?

Ida Jeng Christensen: Hi. Good. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Robin Pomeroy: It's great to have you on as a co-host. Tell us what you do at the World Economic Forum.

Ida Jeng Christensen: At the World Economic Forum, I work as the head of the Forum of Young Global Leaders and as the director of the Forum of Young Global Leaders Foundation.

The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a community of 1,400 leaders representing different sectors, countries and disciplines. So in the community, we have, for example, leaders from academia. We have leaders from business, civil society, public service, governments, arts, culture.

So it's a really, really rich community that works together to move the world forward alongside the World Economic Forum. The community is really rooted in the underlying belief that by bringing together people from different disciplines and different backgrounds, we will be better suited to tackle some of the global issues of our time.

Robin Pomeroy: Great, and we've got three of those Young Global Leaders who were in the offices of the World Economic Forum here in Geneva quite recently. Tell us about what that event was. I believe this was the launch of a new cohort of Young Global Leaders, right?

Ida Jeng Christensen: Every year, the World Economic Forum, alongside an independent selection committee, selects more than 100 Young Global Leaders. And we invite them on a three-year leadership programme that encompasses university modules, events, and opportunities to collaborate on global challenges. So their first meeting with each other was really the onboarding event that took place in Geneva. Where we had 90 young global leaders joining from across 55 different countries.

Robin Pomeroy: That must be a special moment for them, maybe for you also, when you're bringing all these people together from around the world for the first time. Can you describe what happens?

Ida Jeng Christensen: So it's very special to be in a room together. In the new class, we have, for example, gold medalists, we have ministers from different countries, we have social innovators, we have leaders of civil society organisations, founders of companies, executives from global organisations.

The leaders who joined our onboarding event in many ways really represent as well the Forum's multi-stakeholder approach to global problem solving. So that's what made it so special, that they all represent different experiences, different stories, different sectors, different countries.

Robin Pomeroy: Let's get into it. We're going to hear three interviews, short interviews, that were done by my colleagues at your kind of induction event. You're going to introduce us to them one by one. The first one is Charlot Magayi. Tell us who Charlot is.

Ida Jeng Christensen: Charlot is the founder of Mukuru Clean Stoves, an initiative that was created in Kenya. And Charlot has such an incredible story.

Her journey began with a really, really personal experience that inspired her mission to tackle a problem that is affecting millions of households. Working in Kenya, she founded Mukuro Clean Stoves after witnessing the harmful effects of traditional cooking methods firsthand.

So she's really a very inspiring entrepreneur, and also a powerful example of a social innovator who's taking a real life challenge and turning it into a scalable business solution.

Robin Pomeroy: Let's hear from Charlot.

Charlot Magayi: My name is Charlot Magayi. I'm from Nairobi, Kenya. I run an organization called Mukuru Clean Stoves where we use recycled metal to manufacture clean cook stoves and agricultural waste to manufacture the first in the world mosquito repelling fuels.

I've been doing that for the last nine years. We work in Western Kenya, but we also distribute in Ghana, Uganda, and now Namibia. We've reached about 900,000 households. That is distributing clean cook stoves and mosquito repelling fuels.

We work with a network of women business owners who sell the stoves to their constituents. We've impacted about 4.5 million lives so far. And we are currently working on a programme called the Safe Arrival Initiative, where we partner with African governments to bring our stoves to local public hospitals in maternity wards as a discharge package to help mothers protect their children for the first 1,000 days of their lives from household air pollution and malaria.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: What was the context where it all started and how was it born for you at the very beginning?

Charlot Magayi: So the Mukuru story, the Mukuru Clean Stove story was born from a moment of tragedy. When I was about 16 years old, I had a daughter and when she turned two, because we used a traditional stove to cook, she suffered very severe burn injuries from an accidental burn.

And initially I just wanted to make a more stable stove to limit the risk of burns in children under the age of five. And while researching that, I realized that communities like mine in Mukuru were facing high cost of fuel, and household air pollution was killing them. In Africa, that's about a million lives lost every year to household air pollution.

And so I set out to then design a stove that would solve all three problems. And that's how the work started. And over the last nine years we've improved the stoves. We've come up with a new product. We've changed our model to reach more people.

And now we're trying to work with African governments to reach the ones that we miss out on. And this is like moms who are walking out of hospitals where they have healthy babies and they go into their homes where they use open fires or inefficient stoves and they keep going back to the hospital because of respiratory tract illnesses.

So we wanted to also nip that in the bud, to make sure that they get the products that they need to ensure that they protect their children at least for the first thousand days of their lives.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: Charlot, I'm thinking of this moment of when your daughter burns herself and how that must have been such a moment of pain and suffering for your family. And instead of giving up, you took that and you turned it into strength. What do you think allowed you to do that at the time? Because right now, it's been a long time, you see the result of your work, but in the moment very few people would be able to do it.

Charlot Magayi: I think because my story was born from, I thought it was a very simple problem to solve, first of all. I didn't see the magnitude of what I would need to address when I first started Mukuru. In all honesty, I just thought let's make a stable stove to stop children from getting burned.

And it sort of every year or every month it would change because there were the problems that needed to be addressed, that were either greater than the problem I was trying to address, or just simple, like we could fix the same problem with one device or one equipment.

So I think for me, I never saw it as something that's big, I didn't think, oh, let's, you know, address climate change with the cook stove, for instance. In the beginning, it was a small problem that I wanted to solve for just a small community of people in Mukuru, and it kept growing.

And so there was never a moment where it was too big, because as our organization grew, the problems we wanted to solve grew bigger, and we had support, we had the resources, and we have the team. And even when we didn't, we just thought it was now our responsibility to do the work, because we had already excelled in the small endeavors that we had been doing.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: What would you say were some of the biggest challenges that you couldn't foresee at the time? Now you're like, well of course, of course that would have been a challenge, but at the times you thought you were solving something simple and then they kept coming.

Charlot Magayi: The biggest challenge is actually still a challenge today and it's a challenge that we didn't think of as one that would be a challenge because we thought it's a no-brainer, right? If you're using an open fire or a traditional stove and you have the opportunity for a different intervention that reduces the cost of fuel and reduces your exposure to toxic smoke then you want to switch to that intervention.

But what we did not see and what now we strive to address is the fact that even though sometimes people cook over an open fire, they don't realize that that smoke harms their health. And so when you're trying to push a stove and you tell them, well, this one is smokeless, and communities will push back and tell you, but my food tastes better when it smells like smoke. Or, you know, there's specific meals where my husband likes it, cooks this, he cooks this way. Using a traditional stove or an improved cook stove might even cause domestic violence because the food doesn't taste the same, it lacks that smoke smell.

So those are some of the things that initially we missed because I thought everyone would go, no brainer, let's buy this stove.

So we invest a lot in education and awareness creation to try and get the people to understand why the need is there and why it's really, really important that they should make the switch. But also just respecting cultural norms, for instance, understanding why communities are insisting on using open fires and trying to work with them to reach a middle point where they get to accept your stoves without us necessarily disrespecting their cultural norms and the way that they're used to doing things.

And so that is still a challenge to this day. So we work to address it, but it's always there and we try to not show up with too much arrogance in communities, because we feel we're bringing something better, but we show up with a listening ear. Like, what do you think we could do to change the way that you're cooking in a way that would sustain it in the first place? Because most of the time, if you push it down their throats, they'll stop using it as soon as you walk away.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: I wanted to ask you some more specifics about the stoves. Can you explain how are they more safe than the traditional stoves exactly, and how are they more affordable ?

Charlot Magayi: So the stoves, first of all, are more affordable because we use recycled metal to make them. They're manufactured in Kenya. Compared to other interventions with the same level of thermal efficiency, mostly are imported. I don't think anyone is currently locally manufacturing cook stoves.

And so because we make the stoves locally and we manufacture them using recycled materials, it allows us to provide them at a cheaper acquisition cost.

The reason why they're safer is because, first of all, they're more stable than traditional stoves, and this is through the design that I created.

And then we make them using a metal barrel and then the inside part of the stove allows for the heat to concentrate going up, not to the sides. And so, say a toddler comes into contact with the stove, it doesn't heat on the outer part, so they wouldn't be able to get burned.

And then the stable design also allows for, for instance, if a toddler with a certain weight knocks it, it topples but comes back. It never actually falls. And that ensures some safety for the children.

So it's 40% safer than a traditional stove. And it's about 75% cheaper than interventions with the same level of thermal efficiency.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: Why is that saving cost-wise so important for communities who cannot really afford a lot?

Charlot Magayi: The communities that we serve, majority earn about $40 to $100 monthly income. And what that typically means is you have so many competing obligations for your household income and so little.

And if an intervention that will help protect your family from household air pollution, for instance, costs $50, and you earn a maximum of $100, you're not going to invest in that. It doesn't make sense. But if you buy a $10 stove and you use that, you allow your family to reduce their fuel consumption cost by up to $2 every week, first of all, that money can be reinvested in buying nutritious meals, for instance, for families who only take protein once a month can now take protein twice a week. And then for families where they only have a single income earner, one bread winner, can invest that money in farming or something else and allow for them to be a two-income household. And that gives them access to better everything, better school, better school uniforms, access to textbooks that children sometimes do not have.

So it could be one cookstone, but it goes a long way for underserved communities in rural areas where every shilling counts.

And it's invested in something really, really important because everything is important. The fuel is important, the food is important, the education is important but how you distribute it really matters and it is extremely dependent on how much money you're earning.

So a Mukuru stove allowing a family to save $2 a week may not mean much to someone in a city or someone in the developed world but in rural Kenya or rural Ghana that is the difference between a girl going to school with a torn uniform. Or a girl going to school with access to sanitary towels or not.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: What's also interesting is that your stoves are distributed by women as well. How are you empowering women by doing that, and why is it important to you?

Charlot Magayi: Working with women to distribute clean cook stoves in rural areas is especially important to me because women and girls are disproportionately affected by household air pollution.

Women and girls lose so much time collecting firewood. They spend up to three hours a day in rural area just collecting wood and then cooking. And then they're the ones exposed to open fires and household air pollutions.

And so. In as much as they're also the best place to pitch the product, to sell the product because they're the ones who then experience the pain points that come with it, I also felt like they should be the ones to benefit from the distribution of clean cooking. They're able to earn a 10% commission and this allows them to increase their household income by up to 40% within the first year of working with Mukuru Clean Stove.

And that ensures that they are not just helping us solve the problem, but they are benefiting from the solution to a product that harms them the most in society.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: I also wanted to ask you, what does your daughter now think of what you've been able to build and how it's evolved as well? After, I believe after the Earthshot Prize, right, that really changed the direction of your business too? Yeah. How has she become a part of your journey and is still a part?

Charlot Magayi: My daughter is, I want to say, really, really proud of the journey that we've walked together because she's been there from day one. She was the inspiration and she was the reason why I've kept going. But after we won the Earthshot Prize, my daughter actually helped me come up with the new fuel. It was her being stubborn and her asking me questions that I didn't have answers to and her even suggesting that people are catching malaria while they were using my stove that led us into the research that allowed us to develop the world's first patented mosquito repelling fuel.

But she is extremely proud. She obviously wants shares because she thinks she should get some shares in the business. But she's extremely proud of that. She does her own thing. She doesn't work with Mukuru. She's a poet. She's just getting ready to publish her first poem book. I'm not sure I should be talking about that! But she is very proud of the work that we've achieved.

Robin Pomeroy: That was Charlot Magayi, the founder and chief executive officer of Mukuru Clean Stoves, talking to my colleague, Kateryna Gordiychuk.

What does Charlot get by coming all this way? Because she's doing OK. She's founded a business. She's filling a need in the market. What do you think she gets by coming all this and joining the Young Global Leaders?

Ida Jeng Christensen: Well, just like some of the other social innovators in our community, I think Charlot can really benefit as well from expanding her network and meeting with peers who are tackling other really important issues.

So through the onboarding event, there is an opportunity to meet with, for example, public figures, ministers, representatives from business and industry to help her scale her solution, and also just other peers who are working on really challenging issues as well. I think there is lots to be gained from being in a trusted, safe space where as an entrepreneur, you can share your experience and also benefit from the advice of others.

Robin Pomeroy: This is what the World Economic Forum does, isn't it? It brings people together to learn from each other, inspire each other perhaps. You mentioned to me, Ida, as well, there's a Global Future Council on leadership. We've done several episodes of Radio Davos before based on the GFCs. These are these small groups, kind of like a dozen or so people, I think usually, of people from a variety of backgrounds but have an interest in a particular issue and they come together to actually try and arrive at concrete solutions or new ways of doing things. Tell us about the Global Future Council on Leadership.

Ida Jeng Christensen: So the Forum of Young Global Leaders serves as a think and do tank for the future of leadership. And last year I founded a Global Future Council on leadership alongside the World Economic Forum.

In this group we have representatives from different sectors, backgrounds, countries focusing on next generation leadership and what it looks like. And I'm really, really excited to be working alongside the co-chairs of this Global Future Council, who are also two young global leaders from our community, Judy Sikuza and Thomas Roulet who are both driving the work of the Global Future Council forward.

We published our first report, Next Generation Leadership for a World in Transformation we published that during Davos.

And the report highlights some of the approaches that we think will be helpful for leaders navigating an increasingly complex world. I think one of the things we are really establishing is also that this is a very challenging moment in time to lead from misinformation and disinformation to extreme shifts in weather, to economic fragmentation, polarisation, et cetera.

So I think for leaders having some tools and guidance and insight into What are some of the questions we should be asking ourselves right now? What would be helpful to focus on in this moment and time? We found that to be really helpful to the leaders in our community.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you come up with, has that Global Future Council come up with, you know, these are the answers. These are the three things that will help you be a leader. Is that what I'll find in your report?

Ida Jeng Christensen: No, we are much more humble than that. What we're focusing on is the evolving role of leadership and some of the shifts that we're seeing and how that influences everyone's leadership journey. So we're coming into it a little bit more humble.

Robin Pomeroy: Okay, well, people can check that out, link in the show notes to that report, which as you say was published, you mentioned in Davos, Davos the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, the last one in January, 2026.

Let's move on to our second short interview conducted at your meeting. This one is with an athlete, his name is Kirani James. Who's Kirani?

Ida Jeng Christensen: Well, first of all, Kirani almost needs no further introduction. Kirani is a Olympic gold medallist in the 400 metres category, and he's also a professional track and field athlete representing Grenada.

And I think his journey is really such a strong reminder of what sports can teach us when it comes to resilience and perseverance, discipline and determination in the face of setbacks.

Now I met Kirani at an onboarding event in Geneva and it was really striking to me to see just how deeply he embraces his role as a role model within our community. I was really excited to learn more about what sports can teach us and also how sports leaders can use their platform to promote positive messages.

Robin Pomeroy: Let's hear from Kirani.

Kirani James: Kirani James, 2012 Olympic gold medalist in the 400 meters, professional track and field athlete representing Grenada.

So I grew up in Gouyave, a small fishing village in Grenada. It was a very close knit society, a close knit community, where everybody looked out for each other, where everybody knew each other.

So growing up, when I started to do really well, a lot of people were invested in me, right? They were looking out, making sure that, you know, I was doing the right things, that I was getting the support that I need, and all of those things. So it has made a huge impact as to where I am today.

So that's why when I try to go home, at least once a year, go back home to my community, interact with the people that I've known there from when I was growing up, because it does give me that bit of perspective of how far I've come. And it makes me a lot more grateful for my journey.

But at the same time, it gives me motivation to keep on going to represent them and to know that they are proud of me as long as I give my best.

Nicola Rowe: Athletes from smaller and underrepresented nations and communities struggle with visibility and getting the support that bigger countries get. How can you help us to understand the gap? What might surprise people?

Kirani James: So the gap between smaller underrepresented countries and bigger, fully funded countries, I mean, it's a phenomenal gap, I would say.

We are not starting at the same level. When that happens is we have to try a lot harder to get where a lot of the more established countries are. So not just in visibility, but in a lot of other aspects.

Nicola Rowe: I mean, you said it, talent is universal, but opportunity is not. So is there one change that could make a difference for smaller and underrepresented nations and their sport programmes?

Kirani James: The one change that I would make for smaller, underrepresented countries and the sport programmes is proper investment, right? And not just the financial part of the investment, but also the intellectual part as well, right.

I think when you invest in smaller nations, in the people. The benefits is insurmountable. I think you wouldn't be able to really understand the magnitude of what an impact is going to make. You know, as I said previously, it's hard when you're not starting at the same level, right? So I think a lot of direct investment would be key for those countries to really fulfill their potential.

Nicola Rowe: Not everyone will be an Olympian, but what positive changes could more investments in sports bring to individuals and communities as well?

Kirani James: I believe that sports is, it is an environment where people can learn life skills and life values.

So when you invest in sports, you're investing in the people. You're investing in their well-being. You're investing in their mindset. You're investing in them being able to have skills that they're going to carry on for the rest of their life.

In the community, what you see is sport brings community together. I think sports is the greatest unifier that we have in the world. And when you invest in sports, what it does is it brings those communities closer. I've seen it happen in my own community.

And once you have that, then you have people that are not selfish, but they start looking out for each other, that they are closer, they have a special bond because they have something that they can all gravitate towards.

And those are, for me, the biggest impacts you can see when you invest in sports.

Robin Pomeroy: Kirani James talking to my colleague Nicola Rowe.

Let's go to our third and final interview. This is Trisha Shetty. She's the founder and chief executive officer of SheSays. Tell us what that is and who Trisha is.

Ida Jeng Christensen: Yes, so Trisha is a really great example from civil society. She is leading important work within the fields of gender equity to empower women in India. She also serves as a president of the steering committee of the Paris Peace Forum.

So she's really someone who's using her experience, background, and skills to promote gender equity. And I think her story is a great example of the role civil society organisations play in addressing complex social challenges that governments and business perhaps cannot always solve alone.

Robin Pomeroy: Let's hear from Trisha Shetty.

Trisha Shetty: My name is Trisha Shetty. I am the founder of an NGO called SheSays, which works towards advancing gender equality in India, and I'm also the president of the Steering Committee of the Paris Peace Forum.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: Maybe let's start talking a little bit about your journey and how you got into protecting women from and protecting people from gender based violence. Why is this an issue that's so important to you?

Trisha Shetty: You know the statistics are alarming. One out of every second child will be subject to abuse and 51.4% of them are young boys in India. And I am part of that statistic of being a survivor of child sexual abuse.

So it came from a deeply personal experience, a lived experience and also realizing that I am one of every second child that's been subject to this.

And what they don't tell you about abuse, especially when it comes to child sexual abuse, is upwards of 90% is perpetrated by someone closely known to the child, right? It's not a stranger in a dark alley.

So when we launched SheSays, for me it was not just to be cause-driven, but to be need-driven. That meant I did a lot of work, I'm a lawyer by training, so I did lot of working, going to police stations, going to hospitals, telling them, I know what the law says, but in practice, what do you actually do? You know, if a survivor comes to you who's been molested, assaulted, raped, how do you actually address this?

So what we realized is where are the deficiencies in the system and how can we fill this vacuum? And that's why I said we're need-driven. And everything that we have done has been community-led.

And to answer your question of, you know, protecting women, that is not my job. You know I'm not elected by any government state representative. It is a job of a police and it is a job of judiciary.

I never launched, you know, when I was asked in the very beginning, what is your five-year plan, for SheSays, my five- year plan, my ten-year-plan has always been to shut down my shop. I don't want to be so efficient that I need to replace state apparatus. I'm not here to protect women. I am here to ensure that we can remove all the possible barriers that obstruct women, children, gender non-conforming people from getting access to justice, from living a safe, dignified life. Safety, these things have become words of privilege for half the population.

So I am here to make sure that if you have been subject to any sort of crime, justice is a guaranteed path for you, and also making sure that we can strengthen the infrastructures, right? Like your police should work to serve you, to the people. Our constitution starts with we the people, And that's what I want to do, make sure that the Constitution serves us.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: What has been the impact that you think has affected the most? What you've achieved that others weren't able to achieve? And what has it taught you in the place where you are today?

Trisha Shetty: I, as an activist and as a social entrepreneur, I'm very careful of saying things like, I'm the first one to do this. So I managed to do that others did not manage to achieve.

And I'll tell you why, because for me I realized, I started my work as an activist and as gender equality advocate from a very idealistic perspective, right? I'm showing up, I'm going to do the work, I'm going to fight with a great team of feminists, young activists. Of course we should get the result because the law is on our side and we're going to put everything to make sure that we get victims access to justice.

And very soon you realize it's taking two steps forward, one step back, five steps forward three steps back.

And then I have to question why am I showing up? Am I showing for the wins or am I show up solely because showing up in itself is an act of resistance, an act of affirming that I am alive, my life has value and every single person's life has value.

So for me, when it comes to why we set up SheSays, and the impact that we've had. We've launched, to date, the largest global campaign to make sure that menstrual hygiene products are tax-free. We launched it under the title of Lahu Ka Lagaan, which in Hindi translates as tax on blood. And in less than 24 hours, we reached over 23 million impressions on Twitter. Back then, it was called Twitter. A topic that was considered taboo, no one wants to talk about menstruation, no-one wants to talk about bleeding, became a trending viral topic that everyone was talking about.

And what we essentially ended up doing is it became a citizen-led movement, and we successfully got the Indian government to declare sanitary napkins as tax-free.

So for us that's a huge win because it affects half the population, and actually it country's GDP. Menstrual hygiene is the second leading cause for young girls to drop out of school after forced labor. So the longer a girl stays in school, by simply addressing, making sure women get access to sanitation and hygiene, they'll stay in school longer, they will be educated, they will contribute to a country's economy, and when women are empowered financially, they contribute the money back onto the economy.

Kateryna Gordiychuk: Seeing how your organization has affected so many found and young people and really helped them stand on their two feet and giving them back their dignity. How do you think it's shaped you as well as the leader and the advocacy that you do today outside of, she says, and also in your other areas of life?

Trisha Shetty: I go back to the words of Arundhati Roy who said that, you know, there's no such thing as the voiceless, it's only the deliberately ignored or the actively silenced. And the way it has shaped me is I started looking at resilience as a muscle, you now. I had to focus a lot and figure out firstly, why am I showing up? As I said earlier it's show up, not for winning, but just for the value of showing up.

Second is. This line of work of fighting for social justice will constantly break you. You know, in the very beginning, I started realizing people would invite me to talk about gender equality, but I would often get calls to say, you know, you talk a lot about rape. Can you talk about gender equality but without talking about sexual abuse and assault?

And I realized people want to talk about equality without talking about inequality that is pervasive, that is insidious, that is violent, that is actively funded, because that makes people uncomfortable. But the truth is, if it makes you uncomfortable to listen to it, imagine what the person's body went through. The least thing we can do is bear witness to someone's truth and then make sure that they can get access to justice. That's what living in a dignified society looks like.

So how has my job affected me? It's made me realize that resilience is a muscle that I build actively. It's exposed me to the worst of humanity, you know, when you see someone who's raped a child, a child, a four-year-old child, you really are really exposed to worst of the humanity. But it's also exposed me to the best of humanity.

You know, I remember the words of Nadia Murad, who said, hope is dangerous, hope has an expiration date, hope requires action. And it's exposed me to people who have continued to show up as an act of service to themselves and to people.

And finally, my work has shaped me in a way of realizing that I do all this from a place of deep joy. And my resistance is now fueled from a place of deep joy. So it's made me a better person for myself.

Robin Pomeroy: That was Trisha Shetty, the founder and CEO of SheSays, talking to my colleague Kateryna Gordiychuk. She had a very nice couple of literary quotes there. This is the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy. There's really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.

Ida, would you say part of the mission of YGLs is to give a platform to potential leaders? Who might not have the platform they really deserve.

Ida Jeng Christensen: The forum of Young Global Leaders is really created as a multi-stakeholder community. So that means that in our community we have leaders from across different sectors, countries and disciplines. And I think that also speaks to the strength of our communities.

We have founders of companies, we have executives from business, we had leaders of civil society organisations such as Trisha. We have representatives from sport, arts, academia, et cetera.

So the community really exists to move the world forward alongside the World Economic Forum and tackle some of the great issues of our time.

And of course also through that, create a peer-to-peer network where leaders can come and exchange experiences, inspire each others, and also the communities that they serve.

So to your question, being able to amplify as well their own work through the community. That's definitely also something that the community offers.

Robin Pomeroy: We've heard from three very interesting, very different, Young Global Leaders. Where can people who are listening to this find out more about your work and their work?

Ida Jeng Christensen: They can go to our website younggloballeaders.org to learn more about the community, our purpose and also who's part of the community.

Robin Pomeroy: Great, well there's a link to that in the show notes. Ida Jeng Christensen, head of the Young Global Leaders, thanks for joining us on Radio Davos.

Ida Jeng Christensen: Thank you, my pleasure.

Robin Pomeroy: Please follow Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a rating or a view. You can find Radio Davos wherever you get podcasts or wef.ch/podcasts where you can find our other weekly podcasts, Meet the Leader and Agenda Dialogues.

My thanks for this episode to my colleagues Kateryna Gordiychuk and Nicola Rowe for doing those interviews. This episode was written and presented by me, Robin Pomeroy with studio production was by Taz Kelleher. We'll be back next week. But for now, thanks to you for listening and goodbye.